English Defence League website 'defaced, pwned' by hacktivists

Hacktivists claim to have hacked and defaced the website of the far-right group English Defence League.

The englishdefenceleague.org site remains unreachable on Monday morning following a claimed assault by ZHC (ZCompany Hacking Crew). The Pakistani hacking crew claims to have gained access to Gmail accounts owned by EDL administrators before using donated funds to book expensive hotel rooms. Screenshots posted to substantiate this claim are inconclusive.

The defacement (archives by defacement mirror zone-h.org here) lambasts the EDL for its militant Islamaphobia and racism. Defenceleagueclothing.co.uk was defaced with the same message. Both sites run Apache on Linux. It's unclear how they were hacked.

ZHC, which accuses leaders of the organisation of using donations for their own personal benefit, also claims to have deleted the EDL's Facebook page. There are several EDL pages on Facebook and one of main ones, with more than 37,000 members, appeared to be working as normal on Monday morning.

A Zcompany Hacking Crew News page on Facebook boasted on Friday: "We told you EDL we will hack your facebook page we did it. We told you we will hack your website, we have done it today. EDL official website englishdefenceleague.org hacked and defaced. Expect more ;)"

The hackers threatened that "details of supporters and donors of EDL will be made public soon", cyberwarnews.info reports.

ZHC's manifesto against the EDL can be found on YouTube here. The attack fits the pattern of ZHC's previous attacks, which have included hundreds of defacements, many semi-automated.

The weekend's activities are not the first time the EDL website has been targeted by the controversial organisation's political opponents. Last year its forum was hacked by TeaMp0isoN, another hacktivist crew. The incident resulted in the alleged theft of the group's membership list, which TeaMp0isoN claimed was a result of its hack attack on EDL's website. ®